Origin

The root word shared by genteel (late 16th century), gentile (Late Middle English) ‘not Jewish’, and gentle is Latin gentilis ‘of a family or nation, of the same clan’, which came from gens ‘family, race’. Genteel and gentle originally had similar meanings. Genteel first meant ‘stylish, fashionable’, and ‘well bred’—the ironic or derogatory implications that it now tends to have date from the 19th century. The original sense of gentle was ‘nobly born’, from which came ‘courteous, chivalrous’, the idea behind gentleman (Middle English). See also blonde. Jaunty (mid 17th century) is an anglicization of the French for gentle, gentil and was first used to mean ‘gentile’.